Cutting dies are commonly used for producing a container or carton from corrugated board sheet material. These containers or cartons can be produced by flat dies or rotary dies. Rotary cutting dies are typically comprised of a pair of cooperating cylinders or drums. One of the cylinders includes a substrate having cutting blades or rules while the other provides a backing surface against which the cut is made.
Rotary cutting dies of the type described above are often employed to produce slots or cut away a scrap portion from the perimeter of a usable product portion of a blank sheet of corrugated board material as it is processed. As such, provisions for removing or stripping the severed scrap material from certain cutting blades and the processed blank should be provided. Otherwise, if not removed from the vicinity of the cutting die during the cutting process, the scrap material may collect around the cutting blades and, if not properly ejected, may end up being inadvertently combined with the usable product.
To assist in ejecting portions of the blank sheet, it is known in the art to position ejectors on cutting dies. Examples include U.S. Pat. No. 5,881,620 (“Smithwick”) and U.S. Pat. No. 7,111,534 (“Simpson”). In addition, U.S. Pat. No. 5,176,613 and U.S. Patent Application Publication No. 2005/0115372 (collectively the “Cavlin references”) disclose a material positioned between the ejectors and the blank being cut. Although, the Cavlin references are silent as to if or how the material is attached to the ejectors, a product marked with the Cavlin patent number has material glued to the ejectors.
Ejectors may be positioned on the cutting die to eject different portions of the blank after it is cut, and product throughput may be improved if the ejectors can function properly at high speeds and be durable over many cycles without replacement.